By way of introduction, I became a radical activist in the late 1960s. From 1971-1976 was a leader of Red Tide, a revolutionary high school underground newspaper and later youth organization of the International Socialists. In 1977, I was a founding member of the ISO. From 1978-1981 I was a student and antiwar activist at UMB. Since 1985, I have been a public defender in Brooklyn. From 1990-2002, I was President of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325. I am a co-convener of New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) and a founding member of Labor for Palestine.

And during those forty years and more, I have been a supporter of the Palestinian national movement.

Changing Mood

The last six months have seen a remarkable shift in popular perceptions of Palestine. Following September 11, 2001, the U.S. government, the Israeli regime and the media were more successful than ever before in portraying Palestinian resistance as “terrorism.” At home, the Zionist Lobby had a relatively free hand in witch-hunting those who spoke out against Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

This lockstep picture first began to crack in July 2006, when Israel slaughtered thousands of people in Lebanon. But it was the Israeli massacres in Gaza, which began on December 27, 2008, that marked the greatest change. Despite the usual media disinformation, many were appalled at the high-tech slaughter of more than 1400 people — hundreds of them children; the thousands of maimed and wounded; and the utter devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure. Several writers have identified Gaza as the Palestinian Sharpeville.

In this country, the Arab-Muslim community responded to the Gaza massacre with the largest protests since the massive March 20, 2002 DC protest against the Israeli slaughter in Jenin. In New York City, for example, the Break the Siege on Gaza Coalition, led by Al Awda NY, organized several demonstrations in which thousands of people participated. Similar action was held in several other cities.

Perhaps more than ever before, the Zionist regime emerged from the Gaza Ghetto Massacre with, in its words, a serious “PR problem.” Indeed, during the massacre, “Sixty Minutes” broadcast a chilling report on Israeli settlers that ended by warning of the imminent demise of the “two-state solution.” Since the massacre, polls in the U.S. show that favorable opinion of Israel dropped, even among Jews.

One consequence of this post-Gaza “problem” for Zionism is renewed momentum behind the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In February, dockers in South Africa and Western Australia refused to handle Israeli cargo. In March, students in the UK occupying more than twenty universities demanded aid to students in Gaza and/or divestment from Israel; they were soon emulated by U.S. students at RIT, Hampshire and NYU. Numerous BDS activities too place elsewhere.

Conversely, efforts to break the Israeli siege of Gaza have escalated. These include Viva Palestina, a series of aid convoys led by British MP George Galloway. On July 4, the first Viva Palestina US convoy will depart NYC with the goal of delivering $10 million in medicine to Gaza.

The extent of these developments should not be overstated. The response of “mainstream” antiwar formations, such as United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and US Labor Against the War (USLAW), was tepid, at best. The Zionist lobby is still witch-hunting academics such as William Robinson at UCSB. Yet, there are clearly greater opportunities for opponents of Israeli apartheid. This changing climate make it necessary for Palestine activists to wrestle with a variety of longstanding political issues, several of which I would like to address here.

Ultimate Goals: Two States, One State, and Binationalism

Israel’s blatant brutality, combined with the resilience of Palestinian resistance — much of it nonviolent — together with the need to rebrand increasingly unpopular U.S./Israeli wars and occupation throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, explains why Barack Obama felt it necessary to make a June 2009 speech in Cairo, the tone of which seemed to go further than prior U.S. pronouncements in recognizing Palestinian grievances. Specifically, he called for limiting Israeli settlements in the West Bank and establishing a Palestinian state — the “two-state solution.”

Of course, Obama’s speech overflowed with absurdity and hypocrisy: the assertion that the Nazi holocaust in Europe somehow excuses ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians; the pretense of U.S. “evenhandedness,” when, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, white phosphorous, bombs and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers; omission of the fact that Israel receives this support in consideration of its role as outpost and watchdog for U.S. domination of the Middle East; preaching nonviolence to an oppressed people when, as Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out, “the world’s greatest purveyor of violence is my own government”; claiming to support “democracy,” while backing the corrupt, unelected Quisling regime in Vichy Palestine and refusing to recognize the democratically-elected Hamas government in Gaza; and the obvious fact that the U.S. could end the settlements tomorrow by just threatening to cut-off U.S. aid to Israel.

But even leftwing commentators often ignore the most fundamental problem with Obama’s pronouncements on Palestine: that, even if implemented, two-states would not — and could not — achieve justice for Palestinians as a whole, or for even any branch: those in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” those in ’48 Palestine (“Israel” within the Green Line), or those in Diaspora.

While the BDS movement does not take an explicit position on how many states should exist in historic Palestine, the Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of July 9, 2005 articulates the minimum terms for “the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination,” including:

1. Ending [the Israeli] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

First and most obviously, implantation of half a million Zionist settlers has undermined any prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Second, even if the settlers were uprooted, any “Palestinian state” would be a non-contiguous Bantustan consisting, at most, of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Under any scenario, this would remain a defenseless Vichy Palestine, ruled by the Quisling Palestinian Authority.

Third, maintaining 78% of historic Palestine as a “Jewish state” would be possible only if Palestinians — who already make up 20% of the population in 1948 Palestine (AKA “Israel”) — accept permanent inequality and/or expulsion. To survive on the basis of such ongoing ethnic cleansing and apartheid, the “Jewish state” would, by necessity, remain a highly-militarized outpost and watchdog for U.S. imperialism.

Fourth, recognition of a “Jewish state” means surrender of the Palestinian Right to Return to areas within 1948 Palestine, in which 70% of the Palestinian population was ethnically cleansed during and since the Nakba. For example, where did Gazans come from, why did they leave, and why can’ t they return?

This ugly reality is only confirmed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech of June 15, which lays out Zionist terms for a “Palestinian state.” But it is no less true of Obama’s “two-state” vision.

In other words, continued existence of any “Jewish state” in Palestine would only further institutionalize and perpetuate ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the indigenous Palestinians. It is inherently inconsistent with Palestinian national self-determination and democratic rights.

It is for these reasons that a growing number of both Palestinian activists and Jewish anti-Zionists have embraced the call for one secular democratic state throughout historic Palestine. For only such a state offers true self-determination for Palestinians: an end to military occupation, the right of return, and equal rights.

The OSS should not be confused with a “binational” state, an anti-democratic concept first formulated in the 1930s by “left wing” Zionists of the Hashomer Hatzair, and apparently advocated by Israeli Marxist Moshe Machover. In this context, binationalism would mean that, regardless relative population size, Jews *as a group* would have equal weight to the indigenous Palestinian population, and the right to a separate, apartheid state. This, in turn, is based on the false premise that all Jews, like all Palestinians, constitute a distinct oppressed “people” or “nation.”

Whatever legitimacy the idea of Jews as an oppressed nationality might or might not have had in Eastern Europe prior to the Nazi Holocaust, it is clearly inapplicable elsewhere. As recently documented by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, there is no evidence for the existence of a Jewish “nation” expelled from ancient Palestine. The myth of Jewish “peoplehood” was born in the late 19th century to justify the Zionist colonization of Palestine. And since that time, the relationship of most Jews to Palestine is not as the oppressed, but as oppressors in a colonial settler-state. Thus, Jewish and Palestinian workers in historic Palestine share no more of a common class interest than did white and Black workers during South African apartheid.

Thus, while the Palestinian national movement has long agreed to one democratic state with minority rights, it has always rejected a “binational” state as anti-democratic, just as Black South Africans never agreed to national self-determination and separation for the Boers. For the same reasons, Jews living in other countries have no special right to settle in Palestine.

In light of the BDS campaign’s goals, and the speeches by Obama and Netanyahu, “two states” will become increasingly discredited as another front for apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Its main Palestinian proponent, the Abbas regime, has already been largely exposed as a US/Israeli puppet. And notwithstanding continued support for two states from Noam Chomsky and others, one-state is increasingly the default position amongst Jewish leftists.

Answering those (like Chomsky or Avneri) who argue that one state is “unrealistic” because Jewish Israelis “will never agree,” journalist Jonathan Cook rightly points out that the Zionist state will never “agree” to any type of “solution.” It is also important to remember that the fall of South African apartheid only looked inevitable in hindsight. Our job is to support those Palestinians who are unwilling to accept anything less than justice.

Labor and the BDS Movement

Since 1920s, labor officialdom has been a key supporter of Zionism. But labor also has the potential to play a very different role. In the wake of Gaza, BDS has been reaffirmed or newly endorsed by numerous labor bodies, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), UNISON (UK), Transport and General Workers’ Union (UK), Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Canadian Union of Public Employees-Ontario, six Norwegian trade unions, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Scottish Trades Union Congress, and Intersindical Alternativa de Catallunya. The strongest response was made by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union in Durban, and the Western Australia Branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, both of which refused to handle Israeli cargo.

This has generated a Labor-Zionist backlash from Stuart Appelbaum, who heads the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) and the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC).

The JLC smears BDS supporters with accusations of “anti-Semitism,” just as the Israel Lobby routinely attacks Archbishop Desmond Tutu and numerous other critics of Israeli apartheid — many of whom are Jewish.

This is standard JLC operating procedure. For decades, it has served as “progressive” mouthpiece for the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that has spearheaded — and whitewashed — apartheid, dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians since the 1920s. Meanwhile, U.S. labor leaders have plowed at least $5 billion of our union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.

In 2007, Appelbaum and the JLC recruited top AFL-CIO and Change to Win officials to sign a statement condemning British unions for supporting the BDS campaign. Now, to deflect international outrage over Gaza, they have launched “Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine (TULIP),” a benign-sounding name for a project whose sole purpose is to target labor BDS supporters.

Their shameful complicity with Israeli apartheid echoes “AFL-CIA” support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Palestine and the Antiwar Movement

In January 2004, Arab-Muslim activists issued an open letter demanding full inclusion of the Palestinian struggle — including the right to return — in the antiwar movement. Palestine has been taken seriously by ANSWER, the Campus Antiwar Network, the Troops Out Now Coalition, and others. But much of the antiwar movement, including UFPJ and USLAW, remain relatively deliberately clueless about Palestine.

Under pressure from the Arab-Muslim community and parts of the left, UFPJ has finally felt compelled to say something about Palestine, an example of which was its June 10, 2007 event in D.C. But it the issue completely segregated its opposition to the Iraq war, and was virtually MIA during the Gaza massacres. It defines the “Israeli occupation” solely in terms of the 1967 occupation, while ignoring the overall Zionist occupation of Palestine launched by the Nakba and creation of the Israeli apartheid state in 1948.

In contrast, it is critical for the antiwar movement to build strong relationships with the grassroots Arab-Muslim community, including GUPS, Palestine Popular Conference, and Awda-NY.

Comments Off on Michael Letwin, Is Israel an Apartheid State? (Socialism Conference 2009)

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:18 am (PDT)

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AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN

In debate, Obama is more aligned with Bush
It was Mr. Obama who seemed more aligned with President Bush’s current policy of authorizing American special forces to cross the Afghan-Pakistan border into Pakistan’s tribal areas that Al Qaeda and the Taliban have used as a sanctuary.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/us/politics/27policy.html?ref=us

U.S. tortured Afghan journalist for 11 months
“I was tortured and jailed for 11 months and 20 days for doing nothing. They have destroyed my future, my soul. I’ll fight until they apologize to me and give me back what I have lost”.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47488&hd=&size=1&l=e

Shell back in Baghdad after 36-year absence, but boxed in by resistance
But in a sobering reminder of the underlying dangers of doing business here, the company would not disclose the location of its office, and the senior Shell official who announced the gas deal was accompanied by a phalanx of armed guards.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html?ref=world

Western lawyers belatedly figure out that Hussein’s trial was unfair
Long before Mr. Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006, with supporters of Iraq’s new Shiite-led government taunting him as the noose was tightened around his neck, a pattern of intervention by powerful Iraqi officials had been established.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/world/middleeast/25trial.html?ref=world

US soldier accused of abusing and killing Iraqi
Military prosecutors accused a U.S. soldier Sunday of taking an Iraqi detainee to a remote desert location, stripping him naked, shooting him in the head and chest and then watching as another soldier set fire to the body with an incendiary grenade.http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gNASOeVXYtU2rrHiYLyS5aW-gkmAD93BC0NG1

Murder charges against three Army sergeants, none against those who sent them
If John Hatley, Joseph Mayo and Michael Leahy, Jr. — three platoon-level leaders — go to the dock for murdering four defenseless victims, then who goes to the dock for what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and all their lying associates did to Iraq?http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47478&hd=&size=1&l=e

Irish trade union federation reaffirms support for Israel boycott
The trade union movement is the largest and the most organized of all civil society organizations. It is therefore of fundamental importance that Palestinian solidarity work be grounded in the trade unions, particularly if a major international campaign of boycott and divestment similar to the boycott of apartheid South Africa is to take place.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9850.shtml

Settler pogroms work with army
Hard-core right-wing settlers have responded to limited army operations in recent weeks by blocking roads, rioting spontaneously, throwing stones at Palestinianvehicles and burning Palestinian orchards and fields all over the West Bank, a territory that Israel has occupied since 1967. . . . In general, the relationship between the religious settlers of the area and the army is an ambiguous, if symbiotic one.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/world/middleeast/26settlers.html?hp

Pogroms are no aberration
The recent “pogrom” carried out by the illegal settlers of Yitzhar is not an isolated incident or an aberration. Such pogroms happen with frightening regularity and are regularly ignored by the Israeli government who view the illegal settlers as their front line shock troops against the Palestinian population.http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14188

Jerusalem crash not deliberate
“My son was murdered, they killed him. He did not carry out a terrorist attack”. . . . Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel must expedite the legal process leading to demolition of Palestinian attackers’ homes.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7631693.stm

Israel arrested 200 Palestinian workers during RamadanPalestinian workers are not granted work permits in Israel and are being chased and harassed while trying to work and feed their families.http://imemc.org/article/57056

PA admits collaborating with US-Israel v. Hamas
Fatah officers openly called for “joint action with Israel against the common enemy — Hamas,” and expressed their “willingness to take care of the Hamas mosques and institutions using information provided by Israel”. . . . Those who are no less concerned than Abbas are American General Keith Dayton, who is rebuilding the PA’s defensive forces, as well as IDF and Shin Bet officers who recommend Israeli assistance to Fatah in preparation for war. . . . Fatah leaders have emergency escape plans, and most of them own homes overseas.http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3600099,00.html

Palestinians protest McCartney visit, but apartheid supporters rejoice
Sir Paul was forced to abandon a trip to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday because of planned Palestinian protests against his gig, billed as part of the celebrations of the Jewish state’s 60th birthday. . . . “When one of the most admired musicians in the world not only expresses his willingness to visit Tel Aviv, but also publicly talks about the positive things he’s heard about Israel, this is an Israeli diplomatic and PR success of the first order,” said Ron Prosor, the Israeli Ambassador to Londonhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4828082.ece

DailyKos (and others) get free trip to Israel, but won’t touch Israel-Palestine
What was so shocking was the ease with which left bloggers and leaders allowed themselves to be purchased with the promise of a free trip. . . . In fact, a cursory search in DailyKos indicates that debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nearly invisible.http://www.muzzlewatch.com/?p=402

Israel lobby behind Islamophobic video
A group of hard-line U.S. neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats, among others, are behind the mass distribution, ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, of a controversial DVD that critics have denounced as Islamophobic.http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43983

New York socialites dismayed by protest at Leviev-sponsored fundraiser
Manhattan’s elite were aghast to be greeted this evening by 25 chanting protesters when they exited their SUVs and limos to attend a glitzy fundraiser sponsored by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev for the Museum of the City of New York.http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/100205.html

Michigan protest demands foreclosure moratorium
Chanting “Bail out the people, not the banks,” hundreds of poor and working people from across Michigan converged on the Capitol here on Sept. 17 demanding the State Legislature enact SB 1306, a two-year foreclosure moratorium bill.http://www.workers.org/2008/us/michigan_1002/

Torture on death row
So they finally killed Jack Alderman after all. More than 33 years after his conviction for the murder of his wife, the whole time spent on Georgia’s death row, he was executed last Wednesday despite frantic last-minute attempts to have him reprieved.http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/22/humanrights.usa

ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

Woolsey & Lee opposed antiwar challenge to Biden
Prominent Democratic antiwar stalwarts such as Rep. Lynne Woolsey (D-CA) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) — in the name of “party unity” — rejected calls by some delegates for a roll-call vote in which Biden would be pitted against an antiwar challenger for the vice-presidential nominationhttp://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5549

GI Resistance: Iraq and Afghanistan are same war
People internationally are looking to the U.S. antiwar movement to take up these demands and really fight to end the war in Iraq and end the war in Afghanistan, because the U.S. government is not going to stop in this agenda that it has. . . . To me, it’s the same war. It’s about the same things. The excuses that they’re using are as unjustified in Afghanistan as in Iraq.http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/25/antiwar-strategy-and-tactics

“Humanitarian” occupation?
Given the toxic track record of the Bush administration on corruption, lack of health care and a crumbling infrastructure in the U.S. itself, can anyone really believe that Washington has sent troops all the way to Afghanistan for humanitarian purposes?http://www.workers.org/2008/world/afghanistan_0925/

U.S. killing of five civilians generates resistance
The attack occurred in the evening, as the villagers were breaking the Ramadan fast. . . . Thousands of Wazirs from the area vowed during a meeting on Wednesday to raise a volunteer army to make incursions into Afghanistan against NATO forces if the Americans again carried out a raid inside Pakistan.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/world/asia/18pstan.html?ref=world

Amnesty: Many crimes of U.S.-backed regime
The easy availability of small arms and lack of accountability in Iraq has contributed to sectarian killings by armed groups, as well as torture and other ill-treatment; extra-judicial executions by Iraqi government forces and the continuing arbitrary detention of thousands of suspects by Iraqi soldiers backed by US armed forces since 2003.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/17/armstrade.humanrights

Ethnic cleansing, not “surge,” caused decline in sectarian violence
“Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved.”http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080919/sc_nm/iraq_lights_dc

Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness accounts of the occupation
[A] gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43891

The 1948 murder of Count Folke Bernadotte — Who are the terrorists, again?
Two of the planners. . . . were pardoned a few months later and one of them took his place as an elected member of the Knesset. The names of the conspirators are forgotten today except one, [future Israeli prime minister] Yitzhak Shamir.http://www.counterpunch.org/heller09172008.html

New study illuminates Neocon-Israel lobby
The right wing of Israeli politics, the neoconservatives in the U.S. who strongly support Israel, and the aging Israel lobby in the United States all have worked together, and are still doing so, to bring about more wars, regime changes, and instability, specifically the fragmentation of any Middle Eastern states that might ever conceivably threaten Israel.http://counterpunch.org/christison09202008.html

Hamas calls for self-defense v. PA puppet regime
“We call upon our people and the [fighters] to defend themselves by all available means against any attempt to arrest them by [Fatah security] services, which are now working as a unit of the Zionist army”. . . . Hamas said some 300 of its members had been detained by Fatah in the West Bank over the past year, and about half remained in custody.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1022128.html

“Democracy” under Fatah, Israel
Fatah, or more correctly the American-empowered camp within the movement, actively collaborated with the CIA and Israel to “make the Hamas experiment fail” lest it be repeated elsewhere in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world. . . . We also know that the PA is 150% subservient to the US which is in turn subservient to Israel. So why speak to the monkey when you can speak to organ grinder?!!http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/09/19/the-joke-of-palestinian-democracy-under-fatah-israel/

U.S. backs genocidal general for Darfur command
In February, a Spanish judge charged Karenzi and 39 other Rwandan officials with the mass killings of Rwandan civilians and of several Spanish and Canadian missionaries and relief workers. Nevertheless, the United States, Britain and Rwanda have urged U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to renew Karenzi’s contract when it expires next month.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/20/AR2008092001801.html

A bankrupt empire hits the wall
Never before in U.S. history has a major crisis in the sphere of economic relations, expressing both massive private and governmental bankruptcy, come at the same time as a failing Imperial war draining off what little national capital remains.http://www.uruknet.de/?p=34902

U.S. Antiwar activists say “out later”?
On Saturday, September 20, 25,000 volunteers across the country will contact one million people in their neighborhoods and ask them to sign a petition urging the next Congress to bring US troops home from Iraq within one year. (The timetable is based on a new report from the Center of American Progress–coauthored by Dr. Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration — that suggests “an orderly and safe withdrawal is best achieved over an 8 to 10 month period.”)http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/358300/a_million_doors_open_for_peace

PALESTINE

U.S. to sell Israel new bunker-buster bombs
The U.S. Department of Defense announced it would sell the Israel Air Force 1,000 new smart bombs, rumored to significantly enhance the IAF’s military capabilities.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020702.html

Paul McCartney embraces Israeli apartheid
Not only will such a concert violate the Palestinian cultural boycott against Israel, it will convey a message that McCartney either condones or apathetically ignores Israel’s reality as a colonial power and an apartheid state that oppresses the indigenous Palestinians and occupies Arab land.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9832.shtml

Settler pogrom in West Bank
Israeli occupation troops and paramilitary Jewish settlers on Saturday rampaged through several Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, killing at least one Palestinian civilian and injuring several others.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47226&hd=&size=1&l=e

Occupation soldiers present at West Bank pogrom
The footage, obtained from Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, shows Israel Defense Forces soldiers consistently present at the scene of the rampage, during which settlers fired on Palestinian residents, destroyed their property and spray-painted Stars of David on homes.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020914.html

PA caves to Israeli ethnic cleansing and apartheid
“We understand that if we demand that all the five million refugees return to their land, Israel will collapse, therefore we must reach a compromise on the issue and we need to know the number of returnees that can be acceptable by Israelis. . . . We do not want one state for two people”.http://www.imemc.org/article/56956

Gaza students brave PA-ordered teachers’ strike
“The first day, we had just half a day in school, and half of the teachers were away,” said 16-year-old student Isra al-Najjar. “We are not happy with this strike”. . . . [The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights] says the PA threat of salary cuts is illegal, and serves the interests of Fatah rather than the demands of employees. The move also raises questions whether the international money coming in is for the needs of teachers or the games of political parties, it says.http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43867

Exposing Israel’s attempts to equate the Palestinian refugee plight with Jewish immigrants from the Arab world
[T]he ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as Illan Pappe says, had been meticulously planned and systematically implemented. . . . But there never was a Jewish Dir Yasin in Iraq, or a Jewish Tantura in Tunis, or a Jewish Dawaymeh in Algeria or a Jewish Kafr Qassem in Yemen.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47279&hd=&size=1&l=e

Jews attacking Jews
Practically the entire business of studying and analyzing current anti-Semitism has been hijacked and debased by people lacking any serious expertise in the subject, whose principal aim is to excoriate Jewish critics of Israel and to promote the “anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism” equation.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020490.html

Millions of people of color denied the right to vote
Felony disenfranchisement — often a holdover from exclusionary Jim Crow-era laws like poll taxes and ballot box literacy tests — affects about 5.3 million former and current felons in the United States.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14felony.html?hp

Growing resistance to immigration raids
The effort has parallels to the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, when churches brought Central American refugees to the U.S. to protect them from political violence. More recently, churches have offered shelter to illegal immigrants facing deportation. . . . Tips gleaned from black workers were key to learning about ICE’s presence in Mississippi.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig14-2008sep14,0,5069395.story

Statement from Dr. Al-Arian to supporters
Dr. Sami Al-Arian has given his first public statement since being released on bond, thanking his supporters for everything they have done, and calling on them to keep bearing witness to justice all over the world.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47206&hd=&size=1&l=e

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

Sat Sep 13, 2008 10:08 am (PDT)

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OVERVIEW: BIPARTISAN EMPIRE

McCain, Obama find common ground at Columbia forum
John McCain and Barack Obama agreed Thursday night on the need to expand the U.S. military, and said they would have done more to tap the nation’s outpouring of patriotism if they had been in the White House when the World Trade Center was attacked.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nycolu0912,0,3929974.story

ROTC and the Ivies
Mr. McCain said. “Shouldn’t the students here be exposed to the attractiveness of serving in the military, particularly as an officer?” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) readily agreed, calling Columbia’s anti-ROTC stance a “mistake”. . . . [T]he restoration of ROTC at the Ivies might help reconnect two important American subcultures — elite academia and the military officer corps — that have grown apart.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091203114.html

AFGHANISTAN

Obama and McCain on pretty much the same page
“[Obama] called for sending two brigades of U.S. forces to Afghanistan 13 months before the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the same thing,” said Richard A. Clarke, the onetime Bush and Clinton adviser who has been chairing an advisory panel on counterterrorism for the Obama campaign. . . . Despite the rhetorical differences, the candidates share important similarities.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/10/AR2008091003393.html

What Americans must ask themselves
[I]t is lamentable that even left-wing groups in America are talking about taking the war to Afghanistan. . . . [I]s it possible after all to mess up so much, destroy so many lives, and not expect pay back?http://counterpunch.org/ayesha09122008.html

U.S. death squads
The question is: are Special Forces in Iraq and CIA units in Afghanistan carrying out clandestine hits? In most places in the world, those groups are called “death squads.”http://counterpunch.org/hallinan09102008.html

Should the Americans leave now?
“The Americans? I hate even to hear their names, these criminals and infidels. What more do they want from us? They killed my young brother, Ahmad, 27, and my wife, Ahlam, 30, on the same day in 2005. . . . I swear to God, if any Iraqi says, ‘Let the Americans stay to protect us’, he does not have any honour, any dignity, any morals. Let them get out of our country so that we can rebuild it.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/11/iraq

Iraqi Communist Party confers with puppet prime minister about “security operations”
The meeting also dealt with the successes in security, the achievements of the Iraqi armed forces as indicated by their improved performance in the field, as well as the importance of addressing the shortcomings associated with security operations.http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7373/

U.S. approves $330 million in arms deals for Israel; still more in the pipeline
The U.S. government on Tuesday said it had approved up to $330 million in three separate arms deals for Israel, and sources tracking a much bigger deal for 25 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets said that agreement could be approved later this month.http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0932568720080909

Ailey violates cultural boycott, despite racist abuse of troupe memberHis company, and indeed all other artists and cultural entities that care about human rights and realize that art and moral responsibility should not be divorced at any time, are called upon by their Palestinian colleagues and public at large not to perform in Israel until justice, freedom, equality and human rights are established for all, irrespective of ethnic, religious, gender or any other form of identity.http://www.danceinsider.com/f2008/f0912_1.html
Increased ethnic cleansing from West Bank to Gaza
[T]he Hamoked-B’Tselem study reveals an alarming increase in forcible transfers of West Bank residents to the Gaza Strip, effectively making refugees twice over of those falling victim to this punitive policy. . . . [T]he reason behind the Israel authorities’ recent escalation of enforcing this law is based on a desire to do everything within their power to drive a wedge between the West Bank and Gaza, and to turn them into separate entities. This is, again, in direct contravention of the Oslo Accords.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/12/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast

Prisoner release yet another propaganda tactic
Israel’s release of prisoners should be seen for what it is, yet another successful public relations coup in a long line of actions aimed at convincing the world that it is desperately seeking peace.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9817.shtml

Blair sister-in-law: Gaza world’s largest concentration camp
“There is no right to punish people this way. There is no justification for this kind of collective punishment. You were in the concentration camps, and I can’t believe that you are allowing the creation of such a camp yourselves.”http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3595097,00.html

Growing Palestinian support for one-state
In light of the dim prospects for Palestinian statehood, support for the one-state solution, whereby Palestinians and Israelis would live in a single democratic state of all of its citizens covering all mandatory Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, is gaining momentum among Palestinian intellectuals and ordinary people alike.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47176&hd=&size=1&l=e

Film review: “Slingshot Hip Hop”
Jackie Salloum’s most recommended film presents these artists’ struggle to a global audience and helps ensure that Palestinian hip-hop finds claims its rightful place in the proud tradition of artistic resistance to oppression.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9818.shtml

Chile: The other 9/11
On September 11, 1973 a military coup d’etat supported by the administration of President Richard M. Nixon in the United States put an end to the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. . . . The junta, led by Augusto Pinochet, arrested, tortured and murdered thousands of Allende’s supporters.http://counterpunch.org/cantor09112008.html

FBI to get extensive new powers
The changes would give the FBI’s more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. . . . It also would rewrite 1976 guidelines established after Nixon-era abuses that restrict the FBI’s authority to intervene in times of civil disorder and to infiltrate opposition groups.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103306.html

Screening Mumia: suppression of dissent in America
“In Prison” presents extraordinary evidence pointing to Abu-Jamal’s innocence inclusive of crime scene photographs discovered in 2006 that contradict core elements of the prosecution’s case against the man whose written five books while on death row.http://counterpunch.org/washington09112008.html

Death penalty upheld in publicized Georgia case
The prosecution offered no murder weapon, DNA or fingerprints tying Mr. Davis to the killing but instead relied heavily on testimony from witnesses. Since the trial, seven key witnesses have recanted, saying they were bullied by investigators into lying under oath.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/us/13execute.html?ref=us

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

Wed Sep 10, 2008 4:10 pm (PDT)

Overview

Obama Needs to the Peace Vote: Can he get it? Does he deserve it? Can he win without it?
[A]bolition of slavery, voting rights for women, ending child labor, the forty hour work week, health care for the poor and elderly — all these issues were off the table until voters organized outside the two parties of the era.http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/73703

Afghanistan

Obama: Bush’s escalation still isn’t enough
Bush “is moving in the direction of the policy that I have advocated for years.” But he said the plan also “comes up short” because “it is not enough troops and not enough resources, with not enough urgency” . . . . The new deployments represent a 15 percent increase in U.S. military personnel for Afghanistan, and administration officials say the groundwork is being laid for more troops in the future. One senior official told reporters during a background briefing yesterday that the latest influx of troops is “a down payment on what will eventually be an even larger U.S. commitment to Afghanistan.”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090900323.html
2 Afghan civilians killed, 10 wounded by NATO bomb
A NATO bomb missed its target by more than 1 1/2 miles and hit a house Tuesday, killing two Afghan civilians and wounding 10 at a time of rising tension between the Afghan government and international troops over the use of airstrikes.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090900611.html

Fox News & Oliver North Involved with U.S. Afghanistan Massacre Cover-up
Looking at the video from the Times, which shows rows of dead bodies, including many children, we can only conclude that North has once again lied for the government.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47090&hd=&size=1&l=e

Iraq

Troop “reduction” level still higher than before surge
There are 157,000 US troops in Iraq and Kuwait, of whom 146,000 are in Iraq. The withdrawal announced yesterday will reduce the total in Iraq to 138,000, more than when Bush ordered an extra 31,000 troops to Iraq in January last year, which he said would be a year-long deployment.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/10/iraq.usa

Suffering in “post-surge” Iraq
The antiwar movement still has a case to make against the occupation of Iraq — and in a presidential election where both candidates agree that “victory” in Iraq is the goal, it’s more important than ever for opponents of war and occupation to put forward the argument that the U.S. has only made the lives of Iraqis worse.http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/10/post-surge-iraq

Palestine

Israel moves to Judaise East Jerusalem
The Israeli government is attempting to Judaise Palestinian East Jerusalem, and maintain a Jewish majority against the demographic threat of a higher Palestinianbirth rate.http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43833

Histadrut is major enforcer for Israeli apartheid
Live among Israel’s Palestinian minority for even a short time and one is forced to abandon the widely accepted notion of Israel as a liberal democracy. . . . Enforcing this segregated employment structure are official public institutions, state monopolies, and the government itself. The most important is the Histadrut.http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0331.htm#Top

PA fires on Aida camp refugees demanding waterPalestinian Authority (PA) forces used teargas and bullets to disperse demonstrators from Aida Refugee Camp who were demanding water from local PA authorities. . . . Camp residents say that they have gone without water at times for up to two weeks.http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=31847

African-American performer forced to dance at Tel Aviv airport
Dancer Abdur-Rahim Jackson, of New York, was detained by Israeli airport security officers because of his Muslim first name, and was forced to dance to prove he was no terrorist. . . . Security officials at Ben-Gurion airport refused to issue an apology.http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/09/10/2008-09-10_untitled__a-3.html

Fatah rank-and-file impatient with PA’s collaboration
[W]ithin Fatah grassroots there is growing impatience to rejoin the rest of thePalestinian people as part of the struggle, rather than allowing what is left of their movement to be turned into a tool of Israel.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9815.shtml

37th anniversary of Attica prison uprising
The rebellion began on Sept. 9 as a protest against jail conditions and ended on Sept. 13 as one of the bloodiest days in the 20th century in the U.S. The state of New York eventually paid the surviving prisoners $12 million in damages for killing, beating and torturing prisoners.http://www.democracynow.org/2003/9/11/sept_9_13_1971_new_york

Mon Sep 8, 2008 4:01 pm (PDT)

Overview

Obama and McCain campaigns fan ‘war on terrorism’ hysteria
The bipartisan consensus responsible for the “war on terrorism” lie has never
been more ironclad. The next presidential administration will be a continuation
of the Bush-Cheney nightmare — in substance, if not in style.http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3715.shtml

Afghanistan

US air power triples deaths of Afghan civilians, says report
“There has been a massive and unprecedented surge in the use of air power in
Afghanistan in 2008. . . . Mistakes by the US and Nato have dramatically
decreased public support for the Afghan government and the presence of
international forces providing security to Afghans.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/afghanistan.usa

US Attacks Leave 500 civilians killed, injured
At least 500 civilians were killed or wounded during the five-day US-led
troops` ground and air operation in the Sangin district of Helmand province.http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?205155

Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid
Accounts from survivors, including three people wounded in the bombing,
described repeated strikes on houses where dozens of children were sleeping,
grandparents and uncles and aunts huddled inside with them. . . . “They bombard
us, they hate us, they kill us. . . . God will punish them.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp

Harrowing video film backs Afghan villagers’ claims of carnage caused by US
troops
Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,”
shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.” . . . Local people
say that US forces bombed preparations for a memorial ceremony for a tribal
leader. Residential compounds were levelled by US attack helicopters, armed
drones and a cannon-armed C130 Spectre gunship.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4699077.ece

Inmates tell of sexual abuse and beatings in Iraq’s overcrowded juvenile prison
system
“Trials last on average for 25 minutes, no witnesses are called, confessions
are used as the only evidence, and court-appointed defence lawyers get the case
file on the day of the trial, leaving no chance to consult the defendant in
private.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/iraq.humanrights

Israel still destroying Gaza industrial sector
The crisis in Gaza’s industrial sectors has continued to escalate despite the
truce. . . . Israeli policies [have] lead to the closure of 3,900 factories and
workshops in the Gaza Strip, leaving 70,000 Gazans unemployed.http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=31775

Arab activists accuse Israel of Gaza genocide
“The catastrophic situation in which Gaza citizens live, which led to the
deterioration of medical, economic, ecological and humanitarian conditions, in
addition to the death of innocent people, amounts to genocide.”http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iydPB-tm4GnAyyjXmM55qThDEzuA

The Palestinians: Warehousing a “surplus people”
Overall, while both peoples suffered extreme economic oppression leading to the
impoverishment of their entire populations, the daily repression suffered by
Palestinians is on a scale that apparently surpasses that of South Africa in
its apartheid days.http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18750

Zionist myth of enforced exile
Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious communities, usually by
conversion; they cannot be said to share an ethnicity derived from a unique
origin and displaced over 20 centuries of wandering.http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel

Obama and McCain campaigns fan ‘war on terrorism’ hysteria The bipartisan consensus responsible for the “war on terrorism” lie has never been more ironclad. The next presidential administration will be a continuation of the Bush-Cheney nightmare — in substance, if not in style.http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3715.shtml

Afghanistan

US air power triples deaths of Afghan civilians, says report
“There has been a massive and unprecedented surge in the use of air power in Afghanistan in 2008. . . . Mistakes by the US and Nato have dramatically decreased public support for the Afghan government and the presence of international forces providing security to Afghans.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/afghanistan.usa

US Attacks Leave 500 civilians killed, injured
At least 500 civilians were killed or wounded during the five-day US-led troops` ground and air operation in the Sangin district of Helmand province.http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?205155

Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid
Accounts from survivors, including three people wounded in the bombing, described repeated strikes on houses where dozens of children were sleeping, grandparents and uncles and aunts huddled inside with them. . . . “They bombard us, they hate us, they kill us. . . . God will punish them.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp

Harrowing video film backs Afghan villagers’ claims of carnage caused by US troops
Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,” shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.” . . . Local people say that US forces bombed preparations for a memorial ceremony for a tribal leader. Residential compounds were levelled by US attack helicopters, armed drones and a cannon-armed C130 Spectre gunship.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4699077.ece

Inmates tell of sexual abuse and beatings in Iraq’s overcrowded juvenile prison system
“Trials last on average for 25 minutes, no witnesses are called, confessions are used as the only evidence, and court-appointed defence lawyers get the case file on the day of the trial, leaving no chance to consult the defendant in private.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/iraq.humanrights

Israel still destroying Gaza industrial sector
The crisis in Gaza’s industrial sectors has continued to escalate despite the truce. . . . Israeli policies [have] lead to the closure of 3,900 factories and workshops in the Gaza Strip, leaving 70,000 Gazans unemployed.http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=31775

Arab activists accuse Israel of Gaza genocide
“The catastrophic situation in which Gaza citizens live, which led to the deterioration of medical, economic, ecological and humanitarian conditions, in addition to the death of innocent people, amounts to genocide.”http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iydPB-tm4GnAyyjXmM55qThDEzuA

The Palestinians: Warehousing a “surplus people”
Overall, while both peoples suffered extreme economic oppression leading to the impoverishment of their entire populations, the daily repression suffered by Palestinians is on a scale that apparently surpasses that of South Africa in its apartheid days.http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18750

Zionist myth of enforced exile
Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious communities, usually by conversion; they cannot be said to share an ethnicity derived from a unique origin and displaced over 20 centuries of wandering.http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel

BIPARTISAN WAR — AND ANTI-IMPERIAL RESISTANCE — WILL GO ON
Americans will continue to kill and die — and suffer and inflict
terrible injuries — in the U.S. war in the Middle East, regardless of
who is elected president, well into the next administration and
beyond. . . . It has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy since
the Second World War that the U.S. must control the energy resources
of the Middle East. Not because we need them here at home. . . . but
because control of energy gives the U.S. a strangle-hold on our
corporations’ major economic competitors, the European Union and
northeast Asia (Japan, China and South Korea). Whether we call them
al-Qaida, Taliban, insurgents, terrorists or militants, the people
whom we’re trying to kill in the Middle East are those who want us out
of their countries and off of their resources.http://counterpunch.org/estabrook09012008.html

NUMEROUS OCCUPATION STRIKES KILL AFGHAN CHILDREN
Western troops killed three Afghan children and wounded seven other
noncombatants in an errant artillery strike Monday. . . . Fueling
Afghan anger, two other children and a man were killed in a separate
incident Monday involving foreign troops near Kabul. . . . In the
other fatal incident. . . . Afghan TV showed the corpses of two
children and reported that a woman, apparently their mother, was
injured. The man was killed.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan2-2008sep02,0,2374381.story

US ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS WILL CONTINUE AS LONG AS THE OCCUPATION
Last Saturday, a US air strike was responsible for the deaths of more
than 90 Afghans including women and children. . . . Tragic incidents
like this have been repeated over and over again. Almost every time,
the military perpetrators attempt to cover-up their mistakes and this
occasion was no exception. . . . Let the Afghans have their country
back and do with it what they will. Let the foreign troops come home
on their own two feet rather than in body bags.http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/world/10240101.html

HEARTBROKEN AFGHAN GROOM WILL NEVER FORGIVE U.S. MURDER OF HIS FAMILY
I thought American forces were in Afghanistan for our security,” said
Attiqullah, his voice trembling. “I could never have imagined that
they would bomb my wedding party. They killed my entire family. I will
never forgive them”. . . . “Oh my God!” Attiqullah was now sobbing
uncontrollably. “I saw my bride and my family members; I saw the
pieces of their bodies scattered all over the place.”http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/03/1330613.aspx

US PROVOKES AFGHAN RESISTANCE
Heavy-handed bombing raids and house raids, which are seen as
culturally unacceptable by many Afghans who guard their privacy
fiercely, and the detention of hundreds of suspects for years without
trial at the Bagram air base and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have stirred up
Afghans’ strong independent streak and ancient dislike of invaders.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/asia/26afghan.html?ref=world

NATO GUNSHIPS KILL 15+ PAKISTANI CIVILIANS
NATO helicopter gunships attacked three houses near a stronghold of
the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region early
Wednesday, killing at least 15 people, including women and children.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html

U.S. MISSILES KILLED AT LEAST SIX PAKISTANI CIVILIANS
It was the first of what American military officials said could be
more raids. . . . [O]n Thursday, a pilotless American aircraft struck
a large house in another village, Chaar Kehl, about 16 miles west of
Miran Shah. . . . “Only innocent civilians, including women and
children, have been targeted.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/world/asia/06pstan.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

AT US BEHEST, PAKISTANI AIR WAR TERRORIZES CIVILIANS
The Pakistani military. . . . has used jet fighters and helicopter
gunships in the past three weeks to strike at insurgents who pour over
the border to attack American forces in Afghanistan. . . . [A]s a
result of the air campaign, more than 200,000 civilians have fled
their homes.http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/31/asia/pakistan.php

U.S. ATTACKS ON PAKISTANI CIVILIANS GENERATE RESISTANCE
By killing civilians, General Abbas said, there was now a great risk
of an uprising by the tribesmen who supported the Pakistani soldiers
in the border area. . . . Sher Khan, a phone company employee in
Angoor Adda, said in a telephone interview that 19 people were killed
in the raid. He said most of the dead were women and children.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

U.S. DEATH SQUADS ECHO VIETNAM WAR’S OPERATION PHOENIX
The assassination program in Iraq is a collaborative effort between
the British SAS and the American Delta Force. It is called “Task Force
Black.”http://www.infowars.com/?p=4248

“IRAQ FOR SALE: SEE MALIKI”
Though Mr. Maliki seemed to be referring to all foreign troops in his
statements, Iraqi negotiators have said recently that an agreed-upon
2011 date is for combat forces only, and that “training and support”
forces could remain after that if invited by the Iraqi government. On
Monday, a senior Iraqi official said he understood that even a
departure date for combat troops would be “conditions driven”. . . .
Graffiti can be seen on the walls in Shiite districts of Baghdad
saying, “Iraq for sale: See Maliki.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?ref=worldspecial

JIM CROW ALIVE AND WELL IN HEBRON
The occupied West Bank today is like walking through a page from a
different era — part Wild West, part Jim Crow — with one set of laws
for Palestinians and another set for Israeli settlers.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9804.shtml

VILLAGER’S NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE FACES ARMY REIGN OF TERROR
“When we started our demonstrations, maybe 50 soldiers showed up. Now
there are hundreds stationed permanently around us. Israel is treating
us like a major war zone, even though we are using non-violence.http://counterpunch.org/cook09022008.html

ETHNIC CLEANSING LEAVES PALESTINIANS LITTLE TO LOSE
The policy was described to me by a local activist as “ethnic
cleansing by stealth”, with the ultimate aim being to make life so
tough for the Palestinians that they hold their hands up in despair
and relocate elsewhere. . . . “Never fuck with a guy who ain’t got
nothing to lose”; his mantra could be the motto of Palestinians the
length and breadth of the Occupied Territories.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/israelandthepalestinians.humanrights

ISRAELI POLICEMAN SENTENCED TO ONLY 6.5 YEARS FOR KILLING A PALESTINIAN
Abu Hamdiyya was kidnapped and placed in a military jeep and as the
jeep sped away Lazla and three other policemen threw him out. . . .
“He fell to the ground, I heard his head hitting the ground, I heard
his head cracking.”http://www.imemc.org/article/56850

“WE REFUSE TO SERVE IN THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION”
We, high school-graduate teens, declare that we shall work against the
Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories
and the territories of Israel. . . . We cannot hurt in the name of
defense or imprison in the name of freedom, therefore we cannot be
moral and serve the occupation.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9791.shtml

WHY DON’T ZIONISTS ADOPT GANDHI’S METHODS?
It takes a special kind of nerve to embark upon a project — Zionism-
– that can be fulfilled only through the violent destruction of
another people, and then criticize the people you are destroying for
their failure to adopt non-violence. . . . Gandhi himself was very
opposed to Zionism.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m46900&hd=&size=1&l=e

REFUGEES’ SUPPORT FOR RETURN AND BOYCOTT
[D]escendants of 1948 refugees have not forgotten and will not forget
our towns and villages, and that we still know that those are the
places to which we truly belong. . . . [T]he central aim of Israeli
political and military strategy in Gaza is to eliminate the resistance
and the existence of Palestinian refugees struggling to return. . . .
The one path that we have all called for as Palestinians to stop, not
just the genocide in Gaza, but the implementation of apartheid,
colonialism and occupation throughout Palestine is boycotts,
divestment and sanctions on Israel.http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/commentary.htm

APPLICABILITY OF THE CRIME OF APARTHEID TO ISRAEL
[I]t is necessary to support the shift of the struggle from the
limited focus on the occupation of the OPT back to its roots as a
struggle against apartheid and colonialism and occupation in all of
mandate Palestine.http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm

ISRAELI OUTPOSTS SEAL DEATH OF PALESTINIAN STATE
Over the past four decades, Israel has declared nearly two-thirds of
the West Bank as “state land”, seizing it on a variety of pretexts and
transferring much of it to the jurisdiction of settler councils.http://counterpunch.org/cook08252008.html

ONE-STATE RISING
The more Palestinians feel they have nothing left to lose, the more
likely it becomes that they will press for “one person, one vote”,
returning in essence if not rhetoric to the Palestinian Liberation
Organization’s pre-1988 advocacy of a “secular democratic state” in
all of pre-1948 Palestine.http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI05Ak02.html

ONE STATE IS ANTIDOTE TO APARTHEID
Once Jews or Europeans in South Africa or a particular group says,
this is our country exclusively, we have more rights than other
people, that’s what leads you to apartheid. And so the only way out of
Apartheid is to reconcieve this whole country as one country that
belongs to all of us.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9796.shtml

PA FAILS DARWISH’S LEGACY
Abbas spoke of Palestinian unity but in actuality, the PA has complied
with Israel and the US’s attempt to further fracture Palestinian
society by isolating Gaza from the West Bank. . . . And if there is a
common current throughout [Darwish’s] oeuvre, it is his challenging of
injustice whatever its source or perpetrator.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9774.shtml

FATAH’S “POLITICAL STRIKES” AFFECT GAZA’S HEALTH, EDUCATION SECTORS
“These are political strikes [dictated by] Fatah in Ramallah to spoilPalestinian life in Gaza by attacking the health and education sectors.”http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9805.shtml

PA TEACHER STRIKE ON BEHALF OF US-ISRAEL.1
The most recent example of the power struggle and the most tangible
proof of the drive to annex the PLO to the PA, which derives its
authority wholly from the Israeli occupation’s military governor, is
the PA’s decision that its approval, and that of President Abbas, is a
necessary condition for the paying of salaries to its employees. . . .
The government’s economic agenda is set by donors who hold the purse
strings that pay civil service salaries while its security agenda is
set by the three-member committee of American generals consisting of
William Frazer, James Jones and Keith Dayton. It is this committee
that is the PA government’s real frame of reference and its priorities
are to eliminate all opposition to the US-Israeli vision for a
solution to the conflict, starting with the ranks of Fatah and the PLO
and, of course, Hamas.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/913/op111.htm

PA TEACHER STRIKE ON BEHALF OF US-ISRAEL.2
[T]he PA is very much a police state without a state, an entity that
is first and foremost responsible to Israel and the United States. . .
. A classical or rather scandalous example of how the security
agencies are corroding Palestinian civil life is the refusal of the PA
government to pay the salaries of some 3000 teachers hired in 2006
under the democratically-elected government led by Hamas.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m46975&hd=&size=1&l=e

DESPITE PA THREATS, TEACHERS LISTEN TO HAMAS
The Ramallah government told teachers that they wouldn’t be paid
unless they stopped going to work. . . . The Palestine Teachers’ Union
(PTU), a non-elected body controlled by the PLO, called the strike.Palestinian factions in the past accused the PTU of being a “pawn” in
the hands of the Ramallah government. A year ago, elections were held
to form a rival labour union, the Palestine Teachers’ Syndicate (PTS).
Hamas candidates won and are now in control of the PTS.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/913/re1.htm

ISRAEL THREATENS ANOTHER LEBANON WAR, BUT RESISTANCE IS STRONGER
Israeli leaders have issued warnings that they would carry out a more
devastating attack than the 2006 war if Hezbollah were to lead
Lebanon’s government. . . . “I came here to teach my kids the culture
of resistance,” said a visitor who gave his name only as Ahmed, as he
stood with his wife and two children. “I want them to see what the
enemy is doing to us, and what we can do to fight them, because this
enemy is not merciful.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/middleeast/03lebanon.html?ref=world

NO EVIDENCE THAT RUSSIANS ATTACKED FIRST
Republicans and Democrats alike have signaled strong support for
Georgia. . . . To date, however, there has been no independent
evidence, beyond Georgia’s insistence that its version is true, that
Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/europe/03georgia.html?ref=world

CHENEY BACKS NATO MEMBERSHIP
“[The Georgian regime] can count on continued support and assistance
from the United States. . . . Georgia will be in our alliance. NATO is
a defensive alliance. It is a threat to no one. . . . Appreciate
everything you’re doing for us.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/world/europe/05cheney.html?hp

ISRAEL OF THE CAUCASUS
In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military
airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of
Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against
Iranian nuclear installations. . . . The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military
axis was agreed at the highest levels with the approval of the Bush
administration. . . . Georgia, as Saakashvili saw his country’s role,
was the “Israel of the Caucasus.”http://www.metimes.com/Security/2008/09/02/commentary_israel_of_the_caucasus/f5e1/

WAR VETERANS’ CONCUSSIONS OVERLOOKED
As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly
worked outside the wire, away from bases, have suffered at least one
concussion. . . . “The Army was raking these guys over the coals.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/26tbi.html?ref=us

SCIENTIST TORTURED, HER CHILDREN DISAPPEARED
Siddiqui’s family contended that the young mother and children were
imprisoned during at least some of that time at a secret site,
possibly by Afghan or Pakistani officials working in concert with the
CIA. Her two younger children, who are also U.S. citizens and were 6
months and 5 years old when they disappeared, are still unaccounted
for. . . . Her nose has been broken, her lips and skin are deeply
chapped, her face has a deathly pallor, and she is only periodically
lucid, they said.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/25/AR2008082502835.html

IVAW: DON’T DEPEND ON THE DEMS
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are the savior,” said IVAW
member Eli Wright. “But since Obama’s inspired people for change, when
he gets elected, people will see him not coming through. And his
failures will inspire people that they need to fix it themselves.”http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/29/voices-outside-the-convention

OBAMA AIMS TO REASSURE WALL STREET
Obama needed Wall Street to understand that you don’t have to be
white, a “war hero,” super rich, or a Republican like John McCain to
wage war.http://www.workers.org/2008/us/obama_0911/

DEMOCRATS’ ELECTION TO LOSE.2
Obama has been so busy convincing the U.S. business and political
elite that he would be a better manager of American imperial
interests, McCain is getting a pass. . . . When you strip away the
rhetoric, the Democrats share much more in common than they differ
with the Republicans–on every issue.http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/26/rhetoric-and-reality

WHY ISN’T OBAMA WAY AHEAD?
While continuing to market himself as a candidate of change, Obama has
spent the summer assuring the movers and shakers of American politics
that he is committed to a status quo hardly different from what we
have known since at least the end of the Cold War. Thousands of his
most fervent supporters have expressed their disgust with Obama’s moves.http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/28/why-isnt-obama-way-ahead

DEMOCRATS’ WEAKNESS BOOSTS NADER
Nader’s antiwar, anticorporate message is resonating in some quarters.
On the third day of the Democratic convention in Denver he held a
rally attended by 4,000 and plans another on Sept. 4 in Minnesota
during the Republican convention in St. Paul.http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/51172.html

OBAMA HASN’T CHANGED — HE’S ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS
Disappointed as some progressives may be, Obama has not made a
dramatic shift to the center: He’s always been more centrist, cautious
and compromising than many of his supporters — and critics — have
wanted to admit.http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18590

LIBERALS’ FEAR OF ISLAM
[F]or American Muslims and progressive allies, both eager to see an
end to the vilification of Arabs and Muslims in the United States,
Obama’s mantra of hope and change barely set in before it expired.http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/alam270808.html

A CALL FOR BLACK UNITY, ACTION
We call for a National Black Agenda for democracy. . . . These demands
should be promoted inside the trade unions, mass organizations and
social movements comprising large numbers of the Black working class
and other oppressed sectors throughout society. They should be
promoted throughout the many mass activities aligned with the Obama
campaign and by the McKinney/Clemente campaign.http://www.workers.org/2008/us/black_unity_0911/

RNC

NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYED AGAINST PROTERERS
As the protests grew, scores of National Guard troops in riot gear and
gas masks fanned out around the Xcel Energy Center, where the
convention is being held, and set up a blockade about three blocks
away. Police helicopters buzzed over St. Paul throughout the day.
Humvees painted in fatigue green ferried water to police officers
working in the 88-degree heat, and city dump trucks were used to block
traffic on some streets.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02protest.html?ref=us

UP TO 50K MARCHERS DEFY INTIMIDATION
The crowd of at least 20,000 — march organizers estimated the crowd
at as many as 50,000 — was made up of antiwar activists, veterans and
military families, students, immigrant rights supporters, unionists,
welfare rights activists and many more. . . . The turnout was in
defiance of heavy-handed repression and intimidation by police, who
carried out eight or more preemptive raids and roughly 100 arrests
after filling the media in the days leading up to the protest with
warnings about “violence and chaos” that “anarchist” protesters
planned to unleash.http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/02/marching-on-the-rnc

POLICE REPRESS CONVENTION PROTESTS
[A]t a press conference the following day, march coordinator Jess
Sundin was quick to point out that any rage displayed by activists in
the streets is completely justified and pales in comparison to the
state violence committed on a daily basis by U.S. forces at home and
abroad.http://www.workers.org/2008/us/rnc_0911/

LOCKDOWN IN ST. PAUL
The real conspiracy was a plot by 30 federal, state and local law
enforcement agencies to repress dissent and protests under the rubric
of “national security” and the “war on terror”. . . . A member of
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) who witnessed some of the violent
police attacks told reporters that police were “treating [U.S.]
civilians like you would Iraqis.”http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/05/lockdown-in-st-paul

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE DEFIES BOTH PARTIES
Many contemporary musical acts have lined up behind the Democratic
candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama, while the McCain
campaign has put some country music firepower behind it, but Rage
Against the Machine and its legions regard donkeys and elephants as
the same species. . . . “[Police at the RN] blocked us from even
approaching the stage, saying they’d arrest us if we played. So we
went into the middle of the crowd and began to improvise.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/arts/music/06rage.html?ref=us

WIDESPREAD REPRESSION ECHOES RNC 04
[M]ore than 800 people were arrested in St. Paul and Minneapolis over
the last week, and dozens of others were detained, handcuffed,
photographed and searched without arrest. . . . [M]any people have
said they were stopped on flimsy pretexts, or in some cases arrested
on peaceful marches that were blocked by heavily armored police
officers who used pepper spray and flash bangs.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/nyregion/06about.html?ref=nyregion

BIPARTISAN WAR — AND ANTI-IMPERIAL RESISTANCE — WILL GO ON
Americans will continue to kill and die — and suffer and inflict terrible injuries — in the U.S. war in the Middle East, regardless of who is elected president, well into the next administration and beyond. . . . It has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy since the Second World War that the U.S. must control the energy resources of the Middle East. Not because we need them here at home. . . . but because control of energy gives the U.S. a strangle-hold on our corporations’ major economic competitors, the European Union and northeast Asia (Japan, China and South Korea). Whether we call them al-Qaida, Taliban, insurgents, terrorists or militants, the people whom we’re trying to kill in the Middle East are those who want us out of their countries and off of their resources.http://counterpunch.org/estabrook09012008.html

NUMEROUS OCCUPATION STRIKES KILL AFGHAN CHILDREN
Western troops killed three Afghan children and wounded seven other noncombatants in an errant artillery strike Monday. . . . Fueling Afghan anger, two other children and a man were killed in a separate incident Monday involving foreign troops near Kabul. . . . In the other fatal incident. . . . Afghan TV showed the corpses of two children and reported that a woman, apparently their mother, was injured. The man was killed.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan2-2008sep02,0,2374381.story

US ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS WILL CONTINUE AS LONG AS THE OCCUPATION
Last Saturday, a US air strike was responsible for the deaths of more than 90 Afghans including women and children. . . . Tragic incidents like this have been repeated over and over again. Almost every time, the military perpetrators attempt to cover-up their mistakes and this occasion was no exception. . . . Let the Afghans have their country back and do with it what they will. Let the foreign troops come home on their own two feet rather than in body bags.http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/world/10240101.html

HEARTBROKEN AFGHAN GROOM WILL NEVER FORGIVE U.S. MURDER OF HIS FAMILY
I thought American forces were in Afghanistan for our security,” said Attiqullah, his voice trembling. “I could never have imagined that they would bomb my wedding party. They killed my entire family. I will never forgive them”. . . . “Oh my God!” Attiqullah was now sobbing uncontrollably. “I saw my bride and my family members; I saw the pieces of their bodies scattered all over the place.”http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/03/1330613.aspx

US PROVOKES AFGHAN RESISTANCE
Heavy-handed bombing raids and house raids, which are seen as culturally unacceptable by many Afghans who guard their privacy fiercely, and the detention of hundreds of suspects for years without trial at the Bagram air base and Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, have stirred up Afghans’ strong independent streak and ancient dislike of invaders.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/asia/26afghan.html?ref=world

NATO GUNSHIPS KILL 15+ PAKISTANI CIVILIANS
NATO helicopter gunships attacked three houses near a stronghold of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region early Wednesday, killing at least 15 people, including women and children.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html

U.S. MISSILES KILLED AT LEAST SIX PAKISTANI CIVILIANS
It was the first of what American military officials said could be more raids. . . . [O]n Thursday, a pilotless American aircraft struck a large house in another village, Chaar Kehl, about 16 miles west of Miran Shah. . . . “Only innocent civilians, including women and children, have been targeted.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/world/asia/06pstan.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

AT US BEHEST, PAKISTANI AIR WAR TERRORIZES CIVILIANS
The Pakistani military. . . . has used jet fighters and helicopter gunships in the past three weeks to strike at insurgents who pour over the border to attack American forces in Afghanistan. . . . [A]s a result of the air campaign, more than 200,000 civilians have fled their homes.http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/31/asia/pakistan.php

U.S. ATTACKS ON PAKISTANI CIVILIANS GENERATE RESISTANCE
By killing civilians, General Abbas said, there was now a great risk of an uprising by the tribesmen who supported the Pakistani soldiers in the border area. . . . Sher Khan, a phone company employee in Angoor Adda, said in a telephone interview that 19 people were killed in the raid. He said most of the dead were women and children.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

U.S. DEATH SQUADS ECHO VIETNAM WAR’S OPERATION PHOENIX
The assassination program in Iraq is a collaborative effort between the British SAS and the American Delta Force. It is called “Task Force Black.”http://www.infowars.com/?p=4248

“IRAQ FOR SALE: SEE MALIKI”
Though Mr. Maliki seemed to be referring to all foreign troops in his statements, Iraqi negotiators have said recently that an agreed-upon 2011 date is for combat forces only, and that “training and support” forces could remain after that if invited by the Iraqi government. On Monday, a senior Iraqi official said he understood that even a departure date for combat troops would be “conditions driven”. . . . Graffiti can be seen on the walls in Shiite districts of Baghdad saying, “Iraq for sale: See Maliki.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?ref=worldspecial

JIM CROW ALIVE AND WELL IN HEBRON
The occupied West Bank today is like walking through a page from a different era — part Wild West, part Jim Crow — with one set of laws for Palestinians and another set for Israeli settlers.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9804.shtml

VILLAGER’S NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE FACES ARMY REIGN OF TERROR
“When we started our demonstrations, maybe 50 soldiers showed up. Now there are hundreds stationed permanently around us. Israel is treating us like a major war zone, even though we are using non-violence.http://counterpunch.org/cook09022008.html

ETHNIC CLEANSING LEAVES PALESTINIANS LITTLE TO LOSE
The policy was described to me by a local activist as “ethnic cleansing by stealth”, with the ultimate aim being to make life so tough for the Palestinians that they hold their hands up in despair and relocate elsewhere. . . . “Never fuck with a guy who ain’t got nothing to lose”; his mantra could be the motto of Palestinians the length and breadth of the Occupied Territories.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/israelandthepalestinians.humanrights

ISRAELI POLICEMAN SENTENCED TO ONLY 6.5 YEARS FOR KILLING APALESTINIAN
Abu Hamdiyya was kidnapped and placed in a military jeep and as the jeep sped away Lazla and three other policemen threw him out. . . . “He fell to the ground, I heard his head hitting the ground, I heard his head cracking.”http://www.imemc.org/article/56850

“WE REFUSE TO SERVE IN THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION”
We, high school-graduate teens, declare that we shall work against the Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories and the territories of Israel. . . . We cannot hurt in the name of defense or imprison in the name of freedom, therefore we cannot be moral and serve the occupation.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9791.shtml

WHY DON’T ZIONISTS ADOPT GANDHI’S METHODS?
It takes a special kind of nerve to embark upon a project — Zionism- – that can be fulfilled only through the violent destruction of another people, and then criticize the people you are destroying for their failure to adopt non-violence. . . . Gandhi himself was very opposed to Zionism.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m46900&hd=&size=1&l=e

REFUGEES’ SUPPORT FOR RETURN AND BOYCOTT
[D]escendants of 1948 refugees have not forgotten and will not forget our towns and villages, and that we still know that those are the places to which we truly belong. . . . [T]he central aim of Israeli political and military strategy in Gaza is to eliminate the resistance and the existence of Palestinian refugees struggling to return. . . . The one path that we have all called for as Palestinians to stop, not just the genocide in Gaza, but the implementation of apartheid, colonialism and occupation throughout Palestine is boycotts, divestment and sanctions on Israel.http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/commentary.htm

APPLICABILITY OF THE CRIME OF APARTHEID TO ISRAEL
[I]t is necessary to support the shift of the struggle from the limited focus on the occupation of the OPT back to its roots as a struggle against apartheid and colonialism and occupation in all of mandate Palestine.http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm

ISRAELI OUTPOSTS SEAL DEATH OF PALESTINIAN STATE
Over the past four decades, Israel has declared nearly two-thirds of the West Bank as “state land”, seizing it on a variety of pretexts and transferring much of it to the jurisdiction of settler councils.http://counterpunch.org/cook08252008.html

ONE-STATE RISING
The more Palestinians feel they have nothing left to lose, the more likely it becomes that they will press for “one person, one vote”, returning in essence if not rhetoric to the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s pre-1988 advocacy of a “secular democratic state” in all of pre-1948 Palestine.http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI05Ak02.html

ONE STATE IS ANTIDOTE TO APARTHEID
Once Jews or Europeans in South Africa or a particular group says, this is our country exclusively, we have more rights than other people, that’s what leads you to apartheid. And so the only way out of Apartheid is to reconcieve this whole country as one country that belongs to all of us.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9796.shtml

PA FAILS DARWISH’S LEGACY
Abbas spoke of Palestinian unity but in actuality, the PA has complied with Israel and the US’s attempt to further fracture Palestinian society by isolating Gaza from the West Bank. . . . And if there is a common current throughout [Darwish’s] oeuvre, it is his challenging of injustice whatever its source or perpetrator.http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9774.shtml

FATAH’S “POLITICAL STRIKES” AFFECT GAZA’S HEALTH, EDUCATION SECTORS
“These are political strikes [dictated by] Fatah in Ramallah to spoil Palestinian life in Gaza by attacking the health and education sectors.”http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9805.shtml

PA TEACHER STRIKE ON BEHALF OF US-ISRAEL.1
The most recent example of the power struggle and the most tangible proof of the drive to annex the PLO to the PA, which derives its authority wholly from the Israeli occupation’s military governor, is the PA’s decision that its approval, and that of President Abbas, is a necessary condition for the paying of salaries to its employees. . . . The government’s economic agenda is set by donors who hold the purse strings that pay civil service salaries while its security agenda is set by the three-member committee of American generals consisting of William Frazer, James Jones and Keith Dayton. It is this committee that is the PA government’s real frame of reference and its priorities are to eliminate all opposition to the US-Israeli vision for a solution to the conflict, starting with the ranks of Fatah and the PLO and, of course, Hamas.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/913/op111.htm

PA TEACHER STRIKE ON BEHALF OF US-ISRAEL.2
[T]he PA is very much a police state without a state, an entity that is first and foremost responsible to Israel and the United States. . . . A classical or rather scandalous example of how the security agencies are corroding Palestinian civil life is the refusal of the PA government to pay the salaries of some 3000 teachers hired in 2006 under the democratically-elected government led by Hamas.http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m46975&hd=&size=1&l=e

DESPITE PA THREATS, TEACHERS LISTEN TO HAMAS
The Ramallah government told teachers that they wouldn’t be paid unless they stopped going to work. . . . The Palestine Teachers’ Union (PTU), a non-elected body controlled by the PLO, called the strike. Palestinian factions in the past accused the PTU of being a “pawn” in the hands of the Ramallah government. A year ago, elections were held to form a rival labour union, the Palestine Teachers’ Syndicate (PTS). Hamas candidates won and are now in control of the PTS.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/913/re1.htm

ISRAEL THREATENS ANOTHER LEBANON WAR, BUT RESISTANCE IS STRONGER
Israeli leaders have issued warnings that they would carry out a more devastating attack than the 2006 war if Hezbollah were to lead Lebanon’s government. . . . “I came here to teach my kids the culture of resistance,” said a visitor who gave his name only as Ahmed, as he stood with his wife and two children. “I want them to see what the enemy is doing to us, and what we can do to fight them, because this enemy is not merciful.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/middleeast/03lebanon.html?ref=world

NO EVIDENCE THAT RUSSIANS ATTACKED FIRST
Republicans and Democrats alike have signaled strong support for Georgia. . . . To date, however, there has been no independent evidence, beyond Georgia’s insistence that its version is true, that Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/europe/03georgia.html?ref=world

CHENEY BACKS NATO MEMBERSHIP
“[The Georgian regime] can count on continued support and assistance from the United States. . . . Georgia will be in our alliance. NATO is a defensive alliance. It is a threat to no one. . . . Appreciate everything you’re doing for us.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/world/europe/05cheney.html?hp

ISRAEL OF THE CAUCASUS
In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. . . . The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis was agreed at the highest levels with the approval of the Bush administration. . . . Georgia, as Saakashvili saw his country’s role, was the “Israel of the Caucasus.”http://www.metimes.com/Security/2008/09/02/commentary_israel_of_the_caucasus/f5e1/

WAR VETERANS’ CONCUSSIONS OVERLOOKED
As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked outside the wire, away from bases, have suffered at least one concussion. . . . “The Army was raking these guys over the coals.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/26tbi.html?ref=us

SCIENTIST TORTURED, HER CHILDREN DISAPPEARED
Siddiqui’s family contended that the young mother and children were imprisoned during at least some of that time at a secret site, possibly by Afghan or Pakistani officials working in concert with the CIA. Her two younger children, who are also U.S. citizens and were 6 months and 5 years old when they disappeared, are still unaccounted for. . . . Her nose has been broken, her lips and skin are deeply chapped, her face has a deathly pallor, and she is only periodically lucid, they said.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/25/AR2008082502835.html

IVAW: DON’T DEPEND ON THE DEMS
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are the savior,” said IVAW member Eli Wright. “But since Obama’s inspired people for change, when he gets elected, people will see him not coming through. And his failures will inspire people that they need to fix it themselves.”http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/29/voices-outside-the-convention

OBAMA AIMS TO REASSURE WALL STREET
Obama needed Wall Street to understand that you don’t have to be white, a “war hero,” super rich, or a Republican like John McCain to wage war.http://www.workers.org/2008/us/obama_0911/

DEMOCRATS’ ELECTION TO LOSE.2
Obama has been so busy convincing the U.S. business and political elite that he would be a better manager of American imperial interests, McCain is getting a pass. . . . When you strip away the rhetoric, the Democrats share much more in common than they differ with the Republicans–on every issue.http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/26/rhetoric-and-reality

WHY ISN’T OBAMA WAY AHEAD?
While continuing to market himself as a candidate of change, Obama has spent the summer assuring the movers and shakers of American politics that he is committed to a status quo hardly different from what we have known since at least the end of the Cold War. Thousands of his most fervent supporters have expressed their disgust with Obama’s moves.http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/28/why-isnt-obama-way-ahead

DEMOCRATS’ WEAKNESS BOOSTS NADER
Nader’s antiwar, anticorporate message is resonating in some quarters. On the third day of the Democratic convention in Denver he held a rally attended by 4,000 and plans another on Sept. 4 in Minnesota during the Republican convention in St. Paul.http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/51172.html

OBAMA HASN’T CHANGED — HE’S ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS
Disappointed as some progressives may be, Obama has not made a dramatic shift to the center: He’s always been more centrist, cautious and compromising than many of his supporters — and critics — have wanted to admit.http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18590

LIBERALS’ FEAR OF ISLAM
[F]or American Muslims and progressive allies, both eager to see an end to the vilification of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, Obama’s mantra of hope and change barely set in before it expired.http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/alam270808.html

A CALL FOR BLACK UNITY, ACTION
We call for a National Black Agenda for democracy. . . . These demands should be promoted inside the trade unions, mass organizations and social movements comprising large numbers of the Black working class and other oppressed sectors throughout society. They should be promoted throughout the many mass activities aligned with the Obama campaign and by the McKinney/Clemente campaign.http://www.workers.org/2008/us/black_unity_0911/

RNC

NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYED AGAINST PROTERERS
As the protests grew, scores of National Guard troops in riot gear and gas masks fanned out around the Xcel Energy Center, where the convention is being held, and set up a blockade about three blocks away. Police helicopters buzzed over St. Paul throughout the day. Humvees painted in fatigue green ferried water to police officers working in the 88-degree heat, and city dump trucks were used to block traffic on some streets.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02protest.html?ref=us

UP TO 50K MARCHERS DEFY INTIMIDATION
The crowd of at least 20,000 — march organizers estimated the crowd at as many as 50,000 — was made up of antiwar activists, veterans and military families, students, immigrant rights supporters, unionists, welfare rights activists and many more. . . . The turnout was in defiance of heavy-handed repression and intimidation by police, who carried out eight or more preemptive raids and roughly 100 arrests after filling the media in the days leading up to the protest with warnings about “violence and chaos” that “anarchist” protesters planned to unleash.http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/02/marching-on-the-rnc

POLICE REPRESS CONVENTION PROTESTS
[A]t a press conference the following day, march coordinator Jess Sundin was quick to point out that any rage displayed by activists in the streets is completely justified and pales in comparison to the state violence committed on a daily basis by U.S. forces at home and abroad.http://www.workers.org/2008/us/rnc_0911/

LOCKDOWN IN ST. PAUL
The real conspiracy was a plot by 30 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to repress dissent and protests under the rubric of “national security” and the “war on terror”. . . . A member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) who witnessed some of the violent police attacks told reporters that police were “treating [U.S.] civilians like you would Iraqis.”http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/05/lockdown-in-st-paul

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE DEFIES BOTH PARTIES
Many contemporary musical acts have lined up behind the Democratic candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama, while the McCain campaign has put some country music firepower behind it, but Rage Against the Machine and its legions regard donkeys and elephants as the same species. . . . “[Police at the RN] blocked us from even approaching the stage, saying they’d arrest us if we played. So we went into the middle of the crowd and began to improvise.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/arts/music/06rage.html?ref=us

WIDESPREAD REPRESSION ECHOES RNC 04
[M]ore than 800 people were arrested in St. Paul and Minneapolis over the last week, and dozens of others were detained, handcuffed, photographed and searched without arrest. . . . [M]any people have said they were stopped on flimsy pretexts, or in some cases arrested on peaceful marches that were blocked by heavily armored police officers who used pepper spray and flash bangs.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/nyregion/06about.html?ref=nyregion